Louie

Happy Solstice!

Wow - the nestlings fledged today - seems like they just hatched a few days ago! This baby doesn't look nearly ready! Love the fluffy ear feathers.

Here it is, just hopping out of the nest, before it sat on the branch.
And the funny thing is, I thought there was something a little bit different about one of them, and once they were out where I could see them, it was obvious that a grackle laid her egg in this junco nest and has forced the junco parents to unknowingly raise her grackle baby. I guess we're lucky to only have one grackle, and that one of the junco babies survived. You can see how the grackle baby is much larger.
Mom and Dad feed the impostor - it's bigger than they are, too.
As I was driving past this field, a buck and doe were grazing unconcerned by the cars on the road. He did watch me carefully, and I'm sure that if I had gotten out of the car, he would have disappeared in a flash.